Can small business use email marketing/permission marketing effectively?

Virtually every small business is in need of successful online marketing. Easier said than done. however through the aid of various factors that serve as the very foundation of every business. One of which is email married with permission marketing techniques. Nowadays, more and more entrepreneurs are starting to realize the true potential of business email marketing coupled with permission marketing.

Most business owners would agree that traditional marketing is no longer working the way it used to. This is happening for a variety of reasons — people have too many mass media choices, they’re bombarded with way too many marketing messages, the Internet is adding accountability to advertising, etc. So if traditional marketing is no longer effective, then how will you get the word out about your products or services?

What Internet Marketer Seth Godin, author of the book Permission Marketing, calls permission marketing. Permission marketing is when your customers give you permission to market to them. This is opposite from traditional marketing, also known as interruption marketing (another term coined by Godin). Interruption marketing works by interrupting you. Nobody watches television for the commercials. Nobody flips through a magazine for the ads. But that’s how interruption marketing gets you to buy something.

Permission marketing is completely different. With permission marketing, customers look forward to hearing from you. They enjoy receiving information about your products and services. That’s because they’ve agreed to enter into a relationship with you. And if permission marketing is done correctly, you’ll eventually develop a stronger relationship with your customers than you ever would have with interruption marketing.

Permission marketing isn’t new. In fact, it’s older than interruption marketing. Back before there was mass media, business owners routinely developed long-term relationships with their customers. And customers expected to be involved with the selling process from the beginning. Now, of course, we no longer need to be dependent on building relationships face-to-face. With the Internet, we have a whole host of low-cost options available to us, which makes permission marketing easier now than it was before.

Here’s how it works. You start by developing something that your customers find valuable enough to give you permission to contact them on a regular basis. E-newsletters or e-zines, which are e-mail newsletters, are popular and so are Web blogs. Web blogs are like online journals. For a fun sample, check out http://www.boingboing.net Or Seth Godin has his own blog – http://www.sethgodin.com, however, e-zines and Web blogs aren’t the only things of value people sign up for, you can offer them classes delivered via e-mail or tips or contests or points programs or special offers or whatever your creativity can come up with.

While it is possible to develop a relationship with customers using only offline techniques  (for instance, a printed newsletter you mail to your customers) it’s less expensive and more effective to use the Internet. It’s quick and easy for your customers to sign up via your Web site and it’s cheap for you to send it out via e-mail. However, in order to get people to sign up, you first need to tell them about it. That’s where interruption marketing comes in. Then once they sign up, you can start building the relationship.

Is this a lot of work? Yes. Is it more work than interruption marketing? Yes again. But is it more effective than interruption marketing? It can be. Especially since interruption marketing isn’t working the way it used to. I feel that permission marketing favors small business owners. That’s because permission marketing only works when customers and businesses form a relationship, and customers prefer forming relationships with people rather than entities. Customers want to know the person behind the business, not just the business itself.But that doesn’t mean big corporations can’t employ permission marketing techniques. They just need to get creative about it. Perhaps developing a spokesperson or a business “personality” or a forum or group of people.

Newsletters

It is through email newsletters that an entrepreneur gets to successfully build a firm relationship with his customers. This type of business email marketing arrives to its recipients on a semi-regular basis that comprise various types of useful and interesting details. Basically, it includes useful internet links, reviews of new products, computer tips, introduction of newly offered products or services, news stories, and a whole lot more.

These emails are then usually ended with short statements and your contact details. For some, writing newsletters can be hard and challenging. This is why there are those that resort to hiring themselves a writer to do the job for them. This also comes to be effective as writers are also capable of coming up with effective email newsletters.

Newsletters can either come in plain text or HTML formats. Emails made out of HTML are like web pages from which you are given with various tools to use for graphics, fonts, and other details. However, the downside is that HTML emails have a much greater risk of viruses and the larger fill size. Email client incompatibility can also occur with HTML emails. This is sometimes the reason why a lot of online firms and entrepreneurs prefer plain texts for their emails.

Email newsletters in pain text forms are also more appropriate to use as it displays formality and is the common choice of readers. In business email marketing, you sometimes have to be able to determine which particular option works best for your online business.

It is through newsletters that entrepreneurs are able to stay in touch with their prospects. This is very effective as customers are sure to think of your business first whenever they are in need of purchasing a product or service you are offering. Newsletters should also provide customers the opportunity of automatically unsubscribing with the service any time they want.

Newsletters are indeed very effective in successfully promoting an online business. Airlines, telecommunications companies, and banks use newsletters to make their businesses clearly visible to their targeted customers.

One of the most important things that must be greatly considered in email newsletters is the use of an opt-in approach. In this type of strategy, subscribers are obliged to validate their email addresses through the links sent to their emails. This greatly helps an online marketer to avoid any fake sign-ups which is often the case of today. From this discussion, you can clearly see the vital role that is being played by newsletters when it comes to effective business email marketing.

Patience in building a permission marketing list

Building a permission emailing list can be very rewarding. The demand for online marketing tips and strategies have drastically grown and a new form of business has been born, internet marketing strategies. While there are companies that are all too eager to help your site and business build a clientele for a fee, there also many ways that can spread the word about your sites subsistence in a more cost free way. One of this is Opt-in email marketing, also known as permission marketing.

Many people would think that building their lists would take hard work and a lot of time to build and collect names and addresses. This is not so, it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in doing this list, you open your site and your business to a whole new world of target market. Take the effort to take your business to a new level, if traffic increase and good profits are what you want, an opt-in list will do wonders for your business venture.

There are many sources and articles in the internet available for everyone to read and follow in building a list. Sometimes they may be confusing because there are so many and there different ways. Different groups of people would have different approaches in building an opt-in list, but no matter how diverse many methods are, there are always some crucial things to do to build your list. Here are four of them.

1) Put up a good web form above the fold, simply means on the top of the page. While some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to remember that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just forget about signing up.

A good web form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to do. Just write a simple short statement about how they would like to see more and get updated about the site. Then there should be an area where they could put in their names and e-mail address. This web form will automatically save and send you the data inputted. As more people sign in, your list will be growing.

2) As mentioned in the first tip, make your homepage very, very impressive if you want to build a mailing list faster. You need to have well written articles and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is all about, you need to capture your website visitors fancy. Make your site useful and very easy to use. Do not expect everyone to be tech savvy. Invest in having good programming in your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t over do it.

Dont waste your time making the homepage too overly large megabyte wise. Not all people have dedicated T1 connections, the faster your site gets loaded, the better. Go for a look that borders between simplicity and sophisticated knowledge.

3) Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. Even then and now, a satisfied customer will recommend a business always. Word of mouth and recommendations alone can rake in more business than an expensive ad. As your clientele roster grows so shall your list. With more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.

4) Keep a clean and private list. Never lose the trust your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers. These are some tips on how to build a mailing list.

All in all, nothing is a slam dunk anymore in the new world of advertising a small business. As I said in the beginning of this post “traditional marketing is no longer working the way it used to”, this alone is the reason to explore, embrace and conquer the online space. Find a company you can work well with and build the relationship to your online profits.